New York Rangers: The Ken Holland hiring is a lesson for the NHL

Former Detroit Red Wings general manager is expected to take the same job with the Edmonton Oilers at some point this week. The rest of the league can learn a valuable lesson about sunk cost from this hiring.

The National Hockey League is a results-driven business amongst a hyper-competitive network of hockey lifers. These are people that came out of the womb with skates on and were always the best guy on their team until they got to the professional level, so who was ever going to tell them that they were making a mistake.

For much of the last 30 years, the Detroit Red Wings were a model franchise for all of the NHL to follow. The team made the playoffs for 25 consecutive seasons, something unfathomable in today’s salary cap league where organizations must make the decision to get worse on purpose because of the arbitrary ceiling on spending.

In fact, the Red Wings’ organizational strength was part of why the salary cap was ultimately implemented. The 2001-2002 iteration of Hockeytown’s team featured eight players that eventually made the hall of fame, with a ninth, Pavel Datsyuk soon to follow.

Holland assumed the job of G.M. back in the summer of 1997. Under his leadership, Detroit would capture three Stanley Cups and appear in one more that went seven games and came down until the third period. There’s no doubt that he was able to successfully navigate the league of 20 years ago.

The potential Edmonton G.M. drafted extremely well and would extend his guys when their time came. There were no questions asked, if you were drafted in Detroit, you stuck around and helped build on the consecutive playoff appearances streak. But, over time, the Red Wings became too reliant on the veteran talent and as those players got older, the structure as a whole deteriorated.

Hockey lifers are rapidly letting the game they knew as a younger person pass them by. Holland failed to adapt to the changing nature of the NHL and as a result, the Red Wings have some of the worst books in the entire league. Multi-year extensions for depth players are a quick way to run out of cap space.

The Edmonton situation

For as bad as things were the last two years for the New York Rangers, at least someone recognized there was a problem and made an attempt to right the ship. The same cannot be said for the burning tire fire that exists in the province of Alberta.

The Edmonton Oilers were the team afforded the luxury of drafting the best player in the entire world. Make no mistake about it and with all due respect to Sidney Crosby of the Pittsburgh Penguins, this is Connor McDavid’s league now. As a 21 and 22 year old, McDavid’s peers voted him the Ted Lindsay award winner as the player’s MVP and he’s likely to win his third straight.

Yet, the brain trust has failed to compliment McDavid’s all-world talent with anything resembling a quality team. Aside from a playoff appearance back in the 2016-2017 season in which the Oilers blew a 2-0 series lead to the Anaheim Ducks in the second round, McDavid hasn’t enchanted the postseason.

So, bringing in an executive like Holland that is more of the same, is the stereotypical old world hockey mindset. While the Oilers’ brass is likely impressed with Holland’s resume, it’s been more than a decade since he’s put a legitimate contender on the ice and it took him more than seven years to realize he needed to rebuild.

Simply put, this is a mistake and a waste of McDavid’s talent. It’s not a matter of if but when the former first overall pick gets voted into the Hockey Hall of Fame. Even at just 23-years-old, it’s clear that the Ontario native is destined for enshrinement amongst the greatest to ever lace up a pair of skates.

My name is Jeff

This brings us to New York Rangers general manager Jeff Gorton. As an assistant, it was Gorton that was instrumental in developing the roster for the 2011-2012 Stanley Cup champion Boston Bruins. Then G.M. and president Glen Sather going outside of the organization to take a chance on Gorton was a forward-thinking move from the “last lion of winter.”

It’s never easy for someone with a pedigree as accomplished as Sather to admit that he’s no longer the best man for a job, but doing so speaks highly of his leadership ability. In his four years on the job, Gorton has had two cracks at the postseason and two at the draft lottery.

But, more importantly, Gorton recognized that it was time to rebuild at the right time and was able to put the wheels in motion right away. Instead of trying to duct tape together a contender around an aging Henrik Lundqvist, he made the gut-wrenching call to tear it all down and set up the organization’s future.

There’s a reason that the Rangers are within 12 months of possibly being in the postseason while the Red Wings are years away. A general manager sets the direction and culture of an entire organization and identifying problems as soon as possible as a key component of the agenda setting.